Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski opens up about directing one of the biggest blockbusters of the year

Top Gun: Maverick has grossed over 280 million dollars worldwide and broke records in the US by collecting over 150 million dollars during the memorial day weekend.

breaking Tom Cruise's previous record of 64.9 million for the 2005 sci-fi movie War of the Worlds, and beating the previous record of 139 million held by Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

Director Joseph Kosinski who previously worked with Cruise on the 2013 science fiction movie Oblivion talked about reuniting with the actor for Top Gun 2 and how he filmed the action sequences.

Kosinski asked how he came to helm the highly anticipated sequel to which he replied "This one started with Jerry Bruckheimer sending me a script that they were working on, which I read and had some very specific kind of ideas about what direction to take it and I went and met with him and he liked kind of what I was thinking about and thought we should go and pitch it to Tom directly, which we did."

"He liked the title I had, which was Top Gun: Maverick, and where we find Maverick at the beginning of the story, which I liked the idea of finding him in the world of testing cutting edge aircrafts, and he picked up the phone and called the head of the studio and said, “We're going to make this movie.” And that was the beginning of this whole thing."

Joseph Kosinski started his directing career with another sequel to a classic, the sequel to the cult hit Tron called Tron: Legacy in 2010, which went on to gross over 400 million dollars worldwide and like the original went on to achieve cult status.

His last movie was Only the Brave in 2017 a critically acclaimed movie which also stared two actors from Top Gun: Maverick Miles Teller and Jennifer Connelly.

When asked about filming the spectacular action sequences in the movie the director responded by saying " The first thing I did is, I called up the Navy and I got myself on an aircraft carrier out at sea, I went out to the Teddy Roosevelt and got connected with some naval advisors, technical advisors, guys who were XF-14 Tomcat pilots, Super Hornet pilots, and just started diving into their world because I knew the character journey we wanted to tell"

"but I just needed to familiarize myself with what it meant to be a naval aviator, and pick their brains on what the mission could be and how difficult it could be and what the training would be. From there, we just started building the story, one layer at a time, took about 15 months to get the draft in shape, and to figure out how to get these cameras inside the cockpit capture for real.

You can watch the full interview here 

Joseph Kosinski is currently awaiting the release of his next movie an action thriller for Netflix Spiderhead starring Marvel star Chris Hemsworth , Miles Teller, and Jurnee Smollett, and is set to release in June.

Top Gun: Maverick is set 30 years after the events of Top: Gun and follows Maverick as he is tasked with training a group of young pilots for a top-secret and dangerous mission.

The movie is currently in theaters.